


Singed

by neversaydie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Poe Dameron Has Issues, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rey Uses The Force, Trauma, acute stress reactions, poe dameron's depression missions, that slap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-13 17:28:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14117316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neversaydie/pseuds/neversaydie
Summary: Poe lies down with his thick coat still on, muscles groaning from cramping against the cold all day as he watches the last of the reedy yellow sunlight disappear beyond the horizon. It's impossible to keep warm on this forceforsaken planet, and Poe has never missed the muggy heat of Yavin so much in all his days. It seems like a very long time since he saw anything green.He needs to get up and comm in. They're all anxious about checking in with the small number of comrades they have left, flung across the galaxy in the name of safety, healing, or - like him - carrying on the fight. Poe spent the first few days after Crait putting on a brave face aboard the Falcon, reassuring the remaining others and keeping morale up until they reached a sympathetic station for shelter.After that… he doesn't remember the next few days after that.[in which Poe struggles to deal with trauma and stay a good soldier, his relationship with Leia is complicated, and his other relationships aren't any clearer.]





	Singed

By the time he makes it back to the safehouse, Poe's half dead on his feet.  
  
The grubby building is just one nondescript door in a row of many - thankfully not marred by rubble as some of his other recent bunking situations have been - and he even has the privilege of unlocking the building with a functioning comcard. Small luxuries.

The Resistance has maintained a few locations on Albat since well before Poe's time among their ranks, and until recently this was one of the more untouched. He climbs the stairs to the top floor - old fashioned and hewn from the same rock as the sturdy walls of the structure - and ascending from the dark street to the dim glow of the the central skylight is like coming up from underwater. A thin layer of pollution covers everything in the industrial port, even indoors, and he shivers against the cold evening air as he fumbles to open the door to his living space and leaves sooty fingerprints in the grime.  
  
It's one room - used to be two, until part of the roof caved in and nobody wanted to draw the local government attention that would be necessary to get it fixed - but it's still more than Poe was hoping for after the way things have been going recently. He crosses the room in a few steps and sits down heavily on the edge of the sagging bed, fumbles his heavy boots off and tosses them petulantly against the bare wall opposite.  
  
One. Two. Thump. Thump.  
  
He lies down with his thick coat still on, muscles groaning from cramping against the cold all day as he watches the last of the reedy yellow sunlight disappear beyond the tall buildings which mar the horizon, taking the last of the heat with it. It's impossible to keep warm on this forceforsaken planet, and Poe has never missed the muggy heat of Yavin so much in all his days. It seems like a very long time since he saw anything green.  
  
He needs to get up and comm in, that should be first priority - much as he doesn't really want to report another day of nothing. They're all anxious about checking in with the small number of comrades they have left, flung across the galaxy in the name of safety, healing, or - like him - carrying on the fight. Poe spent the first few days after Crait putting on a brave face aboard the Falcon, reassuring the remaining others and keeping morale up until they reached a sympathetic station for shelter.  
  
After that, after the wounded were being cared for and the lonely were being comforted… he doesn't remember the next few days after that. He knows he stared at nothing for a long time, stuck in a loop of remembering how he woke up on the transport and ran to the window to see the blasts making contact with their ships… but strangely doesn't remember seeing any of them explode. There's a gap - it's as though he blinked at the wrong moment and was left looking at blank space, nothing but stars and darkness as if the friends - the family - he'd lost had never even been…  
  
Finn tried to get him to see a medic on the station, rambling about the difference between the Resistance and the First Order and how Poe wouldn't be punished for something as fixable as a psychological hiccup. Instead, Poe went to the General and asked for his next mission, not meeting her eyes and calling her _ma'am_ . Leia had tried to touch his arm and he'd swerved it like a child not wanting to hug a distant relative, shrunk back like liquid and hurried away.  
  
And now he's on Albat, and he's freezing.  
  
It's only the cold that prompts him to move, forcing his creaking limbs upright so he can power up the heater. It's old world and clumsy, doesn't keep the place much above freezing or mean the room isn't drafty enough for his hair to blow in the breeze when he's in bed at night, but it's stopped him from getting sick so far. His contact is late, they were supposed to meet days ago, and Poe is beginning to get antsy. He'll give it three more days before he'll abandon the post and call the contact lost… but he really doesn't want to do that, not when they have hardly anything left to lose.  
  
In spite of the cold and the hopelessness clawing at the very edges of the box he keeps his feelings locked in, Poe begins to sing softly to himself as he begins securing the room for the night - closing blinds, scanning for errant transmission frequencies which would suggest he's been made, scrounging up something to eat (anything to put off comming in his defeat, he carefully doesn't admit to himself). It's an old rebel song his father used to sing, and it's in a dialect not even Kes knew - having, as he once told Poe when they'd both been drinking, sung it with a comrade whose language he didn't learn before she died - so he makes the sounds he remembers rather than articulates any actual words.  
  
Poe always means to sing into a translator and find out what the lost language is, but part of him is too afraid that the answer will come up as _unknown_ \- lost to the stars and the Empire's blade.  
  
Everything tastes like ash lately, but he starts a pot of whatever he has left over from last night on the tiny stove - some kind of vegetable stew he'd been able to cobble together for cheap - because he's a good soldier and he knows he needs to eat if he's going to function. His cover here is working as a mechanic at a local dock (he can fix most ship malfunctions, and is a quick enough study to pick up most basic patches on the fly… which is enough to keep him under the radar), and hauling parts around all day provides him with a good excuse to avoid thinking about much of anything at all… but it does burn fuel.  
  
He's lost weight, despite his efforts, but it's manageable. Leia probably wouldn't even notice if he was standing right in front of her.  
  
Poe realises he's been staring at the wall for too long when the pot's contents almost burn, only animal instinct and the muscle memory of having his knuckles endlessly rapped by his grandmother's wooden spoon for daydreaming in the kitchen meaning he pulls it off the heat in time. He checks the sludge, squinting in the dim light with a practised eye. It's singed around the edges, but not unsalvageable.  
  
If Finn were here, he'd… No, if _Leia_ were here, he'd make a joke about making a dinner in the same condition as himself. And she'd roll her eyes and tell him to stop being an idiot, because there's nothing singed about him. He wouldn't say that to Finn, because Finn still has hang-ups about the idea of damage and what it means, but Leia used to appreciate that sometimes making fun of being fucked up is the only way to handle it.  
  
But there's nobody here, so what he would do doesn't matter. How singed he or his dinner is, that's nobody else's damn business. And they're both _fine_.  
  
When he finally makes himself comm in, eyelids already drooping as he tries to summon a smile for whoever's on the other end of the holo (hopefully Finn, please let it be Finn), he's a couple of glasses of musty-smelling local liquor in and feeling a little more stable in his own skin. He's used to jet juice - the engine room hooch Jess and L'ulo brewed up which had the squadron fuzzy and wired and giggly all at once on many a long night of waiting for nothing on base - but the heavy-limbed familiarity of any mild intoxication will do to ground him right now.  
  
(He doesn't _want_ to be grounded. He wants to fly, lose himself in the g-force and that long moment of silence as the stars become streaks of light against the black right before the jump to hyperspace-  
  
But when he flies, people die. So grounded will have to do.)  
  
Finn doesn't pick up, and Poe instinctively pushes the glass out of sight like a nervous teenager when he sees who has.  
  
"General."  
  
"Poe," she has her hair down, like she'd already retired for the evening, and Poe feels some kind of uncomfortable knot in his stomach when he wonders if she was waiting up for him to check in. Of course she wasn't, but his treacherous brain still wonders as she looks him over. "You've lost weight."  
  
"It's, uh, holo's not great quality, General," he dodges the implied question, fighting with himself before picking up his glass and taking another sip - it might be water, and anyway she's not his _mom_. "Still haven't heard from my guy, I'm gonna give it until the end of the week and-"  
  
"I assumed. You would have been in contact if you had information, and you _wouldn't_ be drinking," she raises an eyebrow, as if Poe hasn't - more than once - seen her three sheets to the wind and regaling the young recruits with tales of the time she choked out a slug who made her wear a metal bikini. "How are you?"  
  
"Uh," he doesn't know how to answer that, not since Crait. He doesn't even know how to look her in the eye now, let alone say anything emotionally honest. "Cold. Albat's been having a lot of storms, which is weird for the time of year, and-"  
  
"I mean in yourself," she sounds a little exasperated, and Poe shrinks down in his seat like he's trying to hide, somehow.  
  
He's good at ignoring it, brushing it off as the product of too many beings dealing with too much drama in too small a space (there were so many beings, and he doesn't even remember the moment they left forever), but he knows what they used to say about him on base. That he was the favourite, that he got away with shit nobody else would have dared to even attempt - all because he's the kind of kid Han and Leia _expected_ to have.  
  
And now he's killed people, just like the kid they did have. Maybe not by his own hand, and maybe with good intentions (he remembers the oily tendrils of Force licking like flames at the edges of his mind before burrowing in deep and burning, and knows that Ben Solo is long dead, and whatever took his place has never had good intentions, only ever hurt with purpose), but Poe still got good people killed. He's no kind of son, not even a surrogate one.  
  
"I'm fine, General," he gets out, becoming aware he's been silent for too long when he notices the concerned crease knitted between Leia's brows. He's speaking more slowly than usual, but he really doesn't have the energy to try and put on more of a front than he already is. "Disappointed in my contact ghosting, but I'll see what I can salvage."  
  
Leia regards him for a moment with that microscopic, penetrating gaze, and Poe doesn't even try and hide from it this time. He just stares back, bags under his glazed eyes and expression blank, because he's worlds away and so, so tired.  
  
"Your friends came to me with some concerns," Leia sets out, carefully, and Poe is hit with a sudden flash of anger.  
  
Hasn't he done enough for them? Hasn't he put enough effort into maintaining a front that they can respect it and leave him the hell alone? Maintaining what's left of the Resistance is more important than him not being able to get his shit together - is he the only one who understands that?  
  
"Finn says he tried to get you to see a medic after Crait-"  
  
"No offence, ma'am, but they were kinda busy putting people back together. My feelings were way down the priority list," he finishes his glass of hooch and wonders if it would be impolite to pour another one while on the holo… and if he gives a fuck about politeness or not. "I just needed to get back into it. I'm fine."  
  
There's a long pause, where Leia just looks at him and Poe just looks right back, having fully run out of the will to not seem dead behind the eyes, until the General sighs. It's a soft sound, out of place next to her commanding presence, and it catches Poe off-guard.  
  
"She can feel you, Poe," Leia sounds tired too, concern finally seeping into her tone in a way Poe hasn't heard since he was an eight year old who'd lost his mother and didn't know which way was up anymore. "Rey. She can sense you hurting all the way from-"  
  
"How? She- we didn't even spend that much time together," he blinks, confused and tired and finally hitting a wall of how much he can process. Space wizards can feel his angst, okay. It's not the weirdest thing that's happened to him lately, so he just absorbs it and moves on because what else can he do?  
  
He feels like he's in battle all the time, since Jakku. The hyper-awareness and ringing in his ears drowning out ambient noise, narrowing his focus to the blackness of space beyond his cockpit and the adrenaline of his movements, knowing one mistake will have him dying cold and alone in the vacuum or crashing down and down into the heat as the sand rises up to meet him and-  
  
Poe has to close his eyes hard for a second to stop picturing it, his lungs turning themselves inside-out as he-  
  
"Apparently the pain is very loud, and very intense. That's how she described it," Leia is still speaking, Poe realises distantly, and his lack of reaction makes her sigh again, quietly, like she recognises something she was hoping not to see. "About what happened after the Dreadnought, I'm-"  
  
"No," Poe cuts her off, looking down at his hands and faintly registering that they're trembling again. He's been trying to figure out whether it's an adrenaline or exhaustion thing for a few days now, but in a detached way he supposes it's probably more about his brain firing in odd directions from some kind of overload. Finn would probably know, he's a walking textbook about everything related to battle. "You made decisions as a leader, and I respect that."  
  
"I didn't hit you as a leader," there it is, out in the open where they can't ignore it, and Poe can't help the flinch it inspires. It was one small blip in a big mess of larger trauma, but compounded with everything else and the humiliation and blame- "I'm sorry, Poe. I should never have done that."  
  
"I've had worse from a Solo," he mutters, in a moment of spite he instantly regrets when he glances up to see the pain flash hot across Leia's face. "General-"  
  
"What do you mean?" She asks it so carefully that it's almost not a question - he's sure she already knows, in her gut.

She saw him after he finally made it back to the Resistance and debriefed - still out of it from blood loss and sunstroke and the after-effects of torture. She knew he'd been on the Finalizer and encountered what was left of her son, but Poe had been so beaten up after the crash on Jakku that he supposes it wasn't hard to come to alternative conclusions about the source of his thousand yard stare. Until now.  
  
"I-I need to go. I'm… I'm not thinking straight," he hasn't thought straight since Jakku - he used to be able to handle this stuff, and part of him is afraid Ren broke something in him permanently. He can't stop feeling the burning cold, sickly slide of someone else's will pushing through his defences, penetrating his mind until- "I need to-"  
  
"I'm pulling you out," Leia looks openly worried by now, which inspires a dull throb of shame in Poe's chest. They don't have the resources for him to break right now, he can't put more of a strain on the people they have left when he's the reason they lost so many. "We can-"  
  
"I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm just tired. Let me do this," it feels like he's fracturing, pieces beginning to fall away from the break which refuses to knit together or scar over, but he swallows hard and forces his concentration into the present enough to make his case. "It's just a few days until-"  
  
"Would you let one of your people stay out there, the way you are now?" The question isn't pointed, meant as an attempt to force a perspective on someone who isn't acting rationally, but it doesn't have the desired effect. Poe wonders if he's too far past rational for that.  
  
"No, but I let them die," he lets out a sound that's not quite a laugh, not quite a sob, and shakes his head. He doesn't look up at the holo again. "I can finish this, General. Then I'll do whatever you want."  
  
"I'm not losing another one, Poe," the way she says it, with that steely broken thread running through it like the Force itself, he can't tell if Leia means _comrade_ or _son_. It hurts too much to try and figure out.  
  
"Yes ma'am," he agrees flatly, before turning the holo off without saying goodbye.

Shaking harder now, Poe grabs the bottle from behind the projector and curls up on the bed, not bothering to turn the lights off before he crawls under the covers. He really wishes Finn had picked up the call. He'd hate to be seen like this, trembling and staring and clawing his way through a simple conversation on the edge of panic, but friendly faces are hard to come by these days, and Finn… Finn has a very friendly face.

He needs to get his shit together, the last thing he should be considering is dragging an actual fucking _hero_ into this mess.

Poe drinks until he can't think much about anything anymore, until the images of blasts heading for fleeing ships and the sand spiralling up to meet him are too blurry to be scary, and closes his eyes to wait for the sun to come up. He doesn't sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> my first fic in the fandom, hello! find me on tumblr @ nostr8sinspace or over at saferforeveryone. let me know what you thought!


End file.
